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Short abstract

As a child, I bought into grand technoscientific visions from Dolly the Sheep to Jurassic dreams. But as hype shaped my career, reality fell short. This is my story of navigating bio-hype, demanding accountability, and trying to take my career back from science.

Long abstract

I built my academic aspirations on grand technoscientific promises. Raised during the hype of Dolly the sheep, I was sold a future where gene editing, synthetic biology, and endless technological solutions would effortlessly fix complex societal and biological crises.

Driven by this optimism, I pursued research expecting groundbreaking progress. Instead, I found an academic ecosystem trapped in a cycle of speculative bio-hype where complex ethical and systemic issues are routinely flattened into market-ready, quick-fix technologies, and the technological solutions that were promised are hardly delivered. Over time, I realized how deeply these inflated promises dictate career paths, funding allocations, and public expectations. We are constantly promised revolutionary solutions to human vulnerability, yet handed incremental technological patches disguised as monumental breakthroughs. As someone whose career trajectory was actively shaped by these seductive visions, I began to ask a fundamental question: Where is the real return on our investment? This talk is a critical personal reflection on navigating the illusion of technological solutions, particularly on working class people being raised in the periphery of global capitalism. Tracing my journey through evolutionary biology and bioethics, I confront the gap between genuine scientific progress and speculative imaginations. Ultimately, it is a story of reclaiming agency, demanding conceptual clarity, exposing technocratic shortcuts, and figuring out how to take our careers and public trust back from science.